Australia COVID: Election closes in as pandemic finishing line recedes once more

Observing how fast things keep changing during the pandemic, a senior Morrison government minister observed to colleagues this week that it was unlikely voters would still be talking about the supply of rapid antigen tests when they go to the polls.

The election seemed to loom just as large – if unmentioned – at Wednesday’s prime ministerial press conference, which opened with an extraordinary 21-minute defensive monologue from Scott Morrison expressing his empathy for people’s frustration with the way the summer has unfolded, and a long list of everything he and his government have done to deal with COVID-19.

“You’ve seen queues, you’ve seen rising cases, you’ve seen pressures on hospital systems, you’ve seen disruption of supply chains, you’ve seen shortages of tests, you’ve seen all of these in all of these countries all around the world,” Morrison said, repeatedly emphasising that it was happening to everyone and that, in fact, Australia’s record is better than most.

But, no, it is not reasonable for the Prime Minister to indignantly say that the criticisms of the government’s failure to secure a rapid antigen test supply were made “with hindsight, not foresight”.

If you think about it, we have spent a lot of time in this pandemic waiting: waiting for lockdowns to end; waiting for vaccines to be developed; waiting for vaccines to be delivered; waiting for borders to open; waiting for the peak in infections to pass; waiting for the economy to open up and take off again.

And the government is now predicting (as are those same economists) that the economy will bounce back strongly once omicron peaks and fades.

On the handling of the pandemic, the government’s lead was cut to just 32 per cent to 28 per cent, from 33 per cent to 23 per cent in November.

The problem now for the government is that voters will not just be judging it on whether it keeps their health safe, but on whether their economic position has been imperilled by the disruption now being caused by COVID-19, and their perceptions of whether the government has given them the tools they need to get through these uncertain times.

A supply of rapid antigen tests – or a lack of them – is a rather standout example.

But it is not just the government’s stubborn refusal to accept blame for a shortage of supplies, it is its refusal to take the issue on itself and look like it was trying to fix it once the problem was identified, and its various changes to the rules under which people work to ones that rely on those tests, without actually having the tests available.

But the story of rapid antigen tests – and how we all had to wait for them to be available – may not be one forgotten on polling day